‘Grief Eater’, a metaphoric expression to process and overcome sorrow, says the author

BHOPAL: The author of a poetry collection book, Grief Eater says that the title is a metaphorical expression of processing and overcoming different kinds of sorrow that people feel in our day-to-day life.

Siddharth Dubey, who belongs to Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior, is an Assistant Professor of English literature at a Noida-based technical institution, has interacted with Millennium Post over his poetry collection book, Grief Eater which has been unveiled recently in Delhi at a function.

“The book has 21 poems that take into account different types of sorrow. Each poem expresses the loss of different kinds that happen in one’s life in the past such as the loss of a person, in love, innocence etc”, the poet said, while talking about the poem collection.

“The theme of death is an overarching one in the collection. In the poems, it has been tried telling about how a person can eat the different kinds of sorrow that I feel in my life, by processing them, overcoming them and eventually consuming them”, he also said.

Siddharth is pursuing a PhD degree on the topic, ‘Gender and Queer Theory’ at Christ University, his father Anil Kumar Dubey is Chief Municipal Officer posted in Datia and his mother Manju Dubey is also an officer in the Women and Child Development Department.

“I cannot really say when the poems started composing, or how the words began to come together in my mind. It was the sum of events that happened over the course of many years and found their voice and identity in this book”, the author shared.

Remembering his inspiration, Siddharth said that during surfing Instagram, a challenge has got on Bookleaf Publishing for writing 21 poems within 21 days and his roommate pushed him to go for it.

“Eventually, the book started shaping itself, I would involuntarily treat it like a personal grief journal”, he said

He wrote a song titled ‘Grief Eater’ months ago and was always returning to it, given the beauty of that title so on a late evening of a breezy day, he declared it to himself, the book is like a grief eater to him, Siddharth told on about the title of the collection.

A major family loss would bring up an entire spectrum of emotional turbulence that I had never really experienced before, was the turning point that really shaped this creation, he further said.

“I step in the shallow waters of grief, and it is more like a rite of passage for me, my stepping into the world I was so far removed from. These poems reflect that grief, especially the last poem, ‘Becoming on the kitchen countertop’ is both the beginning and conclusion of a grief that will constantly hold me and that I will hold on to for comfort”, the author added.

Each poem is an account of loss of a different kind. Loss of a person, love, innocence, of one’s past self, therefore this book is like a crematorium ground where every poem is a weeper of grief that I was too preoccupied to grieve for, he further added.

“In Rajasthan, India, there is a concept of Rudaali, a group of professional women who were called to weep loudly, beating their chests. This sort of inspired me to take these poems as a weeper for me”, he shared.

“I have been accused of writing in a rather pessimistic and dark tone but the subject matter demands such a tone. Also, as the name suggests, this book at one point in time became an eater of my own grief, each poem has been sculpted in the shape of”, he added.

Sharing his inspiration, Siddharth named writers Emily Dickinson, Mahashweta Devi, DH Lawrence, TS Eliot and Whitman.

“These litterateurs have explored the inner depths of the psyche so I naturally gravitated towards them”, he further added.

“I have been writing for as long as I can remember mostly as a way to make sense of the world. This book is one such attempt to do it. I hope the readers will pick this book to assuage their own sorrows, to make sense of the world. I hope it reaches the people who really need it”, Siddharth said.

“The idea of eating grief is basically trying to face it, consuming your grief is acknowledging it, trying to process the pain, and eventually trying to move forward through the emotional turbulence after the loss”, he further added.